This invention related to a method of manufacturing a sensor for detecting ionising radiation and to a diamond sensor element formed by the method.
It is known to use diamond material in manufacturing radiation sensors. The performance of such sensors is determined largely by the concentration of paramagnetic nitrogen, the main impurity in most such sensors. It has been shown that when the concentration of such nitrogen decreases to a relatively low value, a dramatic increase in sensitivity to radiation is observed. However, the usefulness of this increase in sensitivity is offset to some extent by an increase in the response time of the sensor, due to an increase in the shallow free-carrier trapping sites.